Investigation of Tooling Surfaces on Injection Molded Nanoscale Features

Abstract:The composition and surface properties of tooling materials become more critical as the size of the molded features decreases [1, 2]. This work investigates the effect of tooling surfaces with micro and nanoscale features. These tooling surfaces were employed as inserts for micro injection molding. Insert materials included etched and coated silicon wafers with pattern depths of 600 nm and minimum features of 200 nm. Electroformed nickel-based digital versatile disk (DVD) masters were employed as a control because this tooling currently can reproduce features that are 140 nm in depth. The micro and nano-featured parts were molded with high flow polycarbonate over a range of processing conditions. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) and root mean square (RMS) roughness were used to characterize the surface topography of molded samples. The goal of this study was to explore the effect of different tooling materials on molded plastic parts with nanoscale features in terms of replication quality and durability of mold surface.